SB 1070 Resistance Dancin' in the Streets!

This is long and a few days late (so I know I'm not stealing anyone's audience), but it's such a joyful Feathered Bastard that I still can't resist. There's a tune I've been listening to lately called "The Great Stone Wall" by Jim Page, that reminds me that things haven't always been so dark, so bitter, and so hateful on this planet as it seems to be here and now some days. We're so indoctrinated to the way things are that we fail to understand that things haven't always been this way - and its not the only way for them to be tomorrow, either. Ordinary people really can change the world.

Now, read on about the all night party outside of Sheriff Joe's jail while supporters waited for civil rights organizer Sal Reza to be released after his second arrest last week. And hit Stephen's blog (this week's is too funny) at the Phoenix New Times often for updates on what's happening in this place. Between the protests, parties, patrols, prisoners, people power (check out Guadalupe's resistance, too, folks), and my own personal battles (as well as the theft of my laptop from my home), I can't begin to tell you myself what's going on from day to day. So, I'm going to keep hitting up the New Times until they tell me to stop.

Enjoy the Feathered Bastard now, knowing that no matter what the mainstream media reports and pollsters tell you about popular opinion in Arizona, Sheriff Joe is eating a lot of crow these days - spoonfed by people of every age, color and creed. And PLEASE - regardless of anything else you hear, beg Natalie Merchant and all those superstars heading to the Dodge Theater this month to cancel their engagements - we need their moral support more than their money now more than ever. Tell them to come join the people dancing in the streets.

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Salvador Reza Released, Prosecutor Admits No Probable Cause for Arrest

By Stephen Lemons, Sat., Jul. 31 2010 @ 1:54PM

Salvador Reza, at his initial appearance Saturday morning, following a false arrest by MCSO

As civil rights leader Salvador Reza stood in stripes before a night court judge around 3:30 a.m. this morning at the Fourth Avenue Jail in downtown Phoenix, the county prosecutor made an eye-popping admission.

"This is really my review," he stated cautiously of a statement from the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office before him. "I did not see that this rose to the level of probable cause."

Reza's attorney Robert Pastor immediately pounced.

"Your honor," said Pastor, "I just heard the prosecutor tell the court that there's not enough evidence here to suggest that Mr. Reza committed a crime. I ask that the charge be dismissed and he be released immediately."

Of Reza's bogus charge for "obstructing a judicial proceeding," the judge herself seemed skeptical.

"I do not have enough information to find probable cause in this matter, sir," she told the county attorney.

She declined to dismiss the charge, but she released Reza on his own recognizance and set his next court date for August 18.

Reza, leader of the organization Puente, had been arrested late Friday afternoon after watching a band of protesters engage in civil disobedience by blocking Sheriff Joe Arpaio's command post for the MCSO's latest anti-immigrant sweep. The post was located near 35th Avenue and Lower Buckeye, close to the Lower Buckeye Jail. Reza was across the street in an unpaved parking lot.

Reza, after being released Saturday morning

Though Reza was not participating in civil disobedience that day, a pack of aggro sheriff's deputies ran across 35th Avenue and arrested him. Arpaio, MCSO Chief Brian Sands, and MCSO flack Brian Lee have all been videotaped stating that the arrest was because Reza had violated his order of release after he'd been let go on bond the night before for taking part in civil disobedience on July 29. This, as part of a "national day of non-compliance" to SB 1070.

After court was adjourned with Reza's O.R., a crowd of about sixty supporters, who had crammed into a viewing room to watch the proceedings from a TV monitor, erupted into applause. They then filed outside to wait another two hours-plus before Reza and the others arrested that day were set free.

Supporters danced all night waiting for Reza to be let go

The main entrance to the Fourth Avenue Jail had turned into an all-night block party for Reza supporters, with speakers blaring cumbia and protesters dancing in the middle of the street, sometimes in the pouring rain. At one point the crowd of Reza supporters numbered more than 100, and included numerous members of Unitarian Universalist Churches (referred to as "UUs") from across the country, who were in town to protest SB 1070 going into effect.

Sheriff's deputies and detention officers looked on from the roof, and from the corners of the building, but did nothing to stop the crowd. I asked one deputy why he and his compadres were seemingly okay with the revelry.

He simply shrugged and said, "It's a free country."

Pablo Alvarado, executive director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, was present in a parking lot with Reza as sheriff's deputies arrested the longtime anti-Arpaio activist. He said NDLON regarded Reza as a political prisoner, and that in the first two hours of putting up an online petition to "Free Sal Reza," NDLON had garnered 900 signers-on.

"They arrested him for no reason," he told me, as we all awaited Reza's release. "He was doing nothing. They just took him. To me it's clear that it's retaliation, because he's been highly critical of the sheriff. They [Arpaio and his staff] don't like him. They hate him."

Indeed, Reza has led several massive marches aimed directly at ending Arpaio's rule, as well as daily protests outside the Wells Fargo Building in downtown Phoenix, where Arpaio keeps two floors of pricey executive offices. Reza's Wells Fargo campaign ended with the bank asking Arpaio to leave, forcing the county to find another building for the MCSO, which Arpaio will likely move into sometime in 2011.

No one parties like a Unitarian...

When Reza finally emerged from jail Saturday morning, the sun was up, and his fellow activists were overjoyed to see him.

Reza said he was shocked by the arrest, which came without warning, just as he was about to leave for an interview.

"When I saw them coming, I thought they were coming for the people in the street," he explained. "But then they just passed them and went for me."

Regarding who actually ordered his arrest, Reza believes it was MCSO Deputy Chief Brian Sands, one of Arpaio's top henchmen, a man who looks like he would have felt right at home in the KGB.

"It was Sands," Reza contended. "Sands was in command."

MSCO thugs hustled a cuffed Reza to a van, where he remained for hours by himself. At one point, the MCSO opened up the van to display Reza to photographers and journalists like a captured prisoner of war.

NDLON's Sarahi Uribe said there were feces on the floor of the holding cell she was in

"If they can do this to me," he told the reporters present before refusing interviews, "what do you expect they can do to anybody else."

Reza was transported to Fourth Avenue, booked, and forced to change into county stripes. As he was the night before, he was placed in solitary confinement. Reza said he was allowed no phone call, and there was no phone in the cell. He also stated that deputies never read him his Miranda rights.

I asked if he thought the MCSO was trying to break him.

"I think it's going to be a long time before they break me," he laughed. "I was ready to go eighteen days...that's when the court date is."

I wondered if he planned to sue the MCSO, as so many of Arpaio's victims have done, earning massive payouts from county coffers. Reza didn't say yea or nay.

"I just wish the [ U.S. Department of Justice] would get on the ball and do something about it," he replied. "I don't know what else they want...It's very clear."

The DOJ has been investigating Arpaio for more than a year now for civil rights violations. There's also a federal grand jury in Phoenix looking into Arpaio and the MCSO for criminal abuse of power.

Concerning the detention officers, Reza said he actually got along with some this time.

"Some of them are nice," he said. "Some of them, they basically don't like Arpaio."

This sentiment was echoed to some degree by Sarahi Uribe, a Yale graduate and organizer with NDLON, who'd been one of the protesters blocking sheriff's patrol cars from leaving for the sweep. She, too, was released on her own recognizance by the judge.

"One of the clerks or one of the officers inside slapped a message on the window [of the cell] that said, `By the way, what you guys are doing is awesome,' and walked away," Uribe told me.

Still, she was interrogated repeatedly by 287(g) officers in the jail, even though she's an American citizen. This, likely because she's not white and she initially refused to tell them her country of origin.

She also described "disgusting" conditions in the holding cell where she was kept with several other women. Uribe said women were sleeping on a floor littered with feces. Like Reza, she was never Mirandized.

Before he headed out to get some much needed rest, I asked Reza if he had any words for Sheriff Arpaio.

"Yeah," he said. "Come back to civilization."

Fat chance of that. They don't call it "Mari-Kafka County" for nothin'. For those of you reading who loathe Reza because of his politics, keep this in mind: There was no probable cause for his arrest. And if you want Arizona to resemble part of America, rather than a Third World junta, you should denounce his detention just as if you were one of his supporters.

"I'm Mexican, Pull Me Over."

This is where you need to get the news on Phoenix from...

Hey - check out the car!

------------------from The Feathered Bastard------------------

Linda Ronstadt Returns, Joe Arpaio Hunts Hispanics, and ACLU Announces Plans to Sue Over SB 1070

Phoenix New Times
By Stephen Lemons
Wednesday, Apr. 28 2010

Categories: Feathered Bastard

EarlyOnsetofNight

One way of combating Sheriff Joe's anti-brown sweeps, and SB1070 to boot

Tomorrow will be a big day in Sand Land, with Latina pop icon Shakira meeting with Mayor Phil Gordon over their opposition to Arizona's new racial profiling law. Normally, that alone would make for a huge news day here in Cactus Country, but both the ACLU and Sheriff Joe plan to kick it up a notch.

Arpaio's just announced that his 15th anti-immigrant dragnet will start tomorrow, with a press conference scheduled for 4 p.m. This is the press advisory sent out by Arpaio's flak:

"As previously promised, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio will kick off his15th crime suppression/illegal immigration enforcement operation which will utilize nearly 150 deputies and posse volunteers. The area targeted for this suppression operation, Arpaio says, was chosen weeks ago because of its high concentration of drop houses and human smuggling transportation routes as well as overall crime statistics and will be announced on Thursday by Sheriff Arpaio at his 4PM press briefing. That briefing will be held in front of the Sheriff's Training Academy at 2627 South 35th Avenue in Phoenix."

BTW, I spotted an apparent mistake in this advisory. It should state,

"The area targeted for this suppression operation...was chosen weeks ago because of its high concentration of Hispanics."

In this regard, catch a clue from the above photo from the blog Early Onset of Night. Maybe those activists who will be monitoring (read, "dogging") MCSO vehicles during tomorrow's sweep of brown people should do something similar to their cars.

In sympathy, I plan to spray-paint myself a nice, dark tan, blast La Campesina from my car stereo, hang a Shakira air freshener from my rearview window, and tell the deputy dawgs that pull me over that I'm actually Horatio Sanz.

Hey, there's more than one way to skin a story.

Also on the front burner for tomorrow is a press conference being given on the steps of Governor Jan Bewer's office by the ACLU of Arizona, MALDEF and other groups announcing their intent to sue the state over the recently signed SB1070.

Grammy-winner Linda Ronstadt will be coming up from her home in Tucson to be present for the presser tomorrow. You'll recall that Ronstadt was in Phoenix for a massive march to Joe's jails back in January. She'll be joined by representatives of the various organizations involved, as well as by Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers of America.

I'll attend the Ronstadt event and follow-up afterward. Regarding the Arpaio presser, "America's Toughest Sheriff" is too much of a pantywaist to allow me into his press conferences.

He must be afraid that I'll ask him a tough question, like,

"When you're indicted by the feds, do you want to be arrested with a pair of your own pink handcuffs?"

Or...

"As a prospective resident of a federal prison facility, do you prefer being on the bottom or the top -- um -- bunk?"

JOIN COPWATCH!!!

More blogging from the feathered bastard. These folks are just awesome in action. Citizen journalism is where it's at - there's much power in it. 

Hit Stephen's original of this for video.
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Joe Arpaio's Deputies Harass Activists with Cameras, but Arpaio Acknowledged Observers' Right to Film in 2006

By Stephen Lemons in Feathered Bastard

Friday, Sep. 18 2009 @ 9:53AM

The letter from Sheriff Joe acknowledging the rights of legal observers

Sheriff Arpaio's boys in beige have begun a war within a war against those who observe them -- activists armed with video cameras who listen to police scanners during Arpaio's racial profiling sweeps and scramble to find the stop and capture it on camera.

During the last sweep -- which occurred during Labor Day weekend in southwest Phoenix -- activists, reporters, lawyers, and at least one politician were harassed. In one case, a legal observer was ordered to give up his camera because it had become "evidence" in the words of the deputy. That deputy took off once a local news crew showed up.

In another incident at the Gran Mercado, activist/radio show host Carlos Galindo says his video camera was taken from him as he filmed deputies "investigating" bootleg CDs and DVDs. Galindo claims they took the camera from him, erased the video and gave it back. But, Galindo indicates on the YouTube video he posted that he was able to retrieve the video in any case.

Phoenix City Councilman Michael Nowakowski was harassed by deputies as he observed their activity in the parking lot of a Burger King. Even though deputies finally allowed him to approach and ask questions, Nowakowski was later warned via letter from the MCSO not to interfere with MCSO investigations.

Videographer Dennis Gilman caught the Nowakowski incident on tape, and has posted it to his YouTube site Humaneague002.

Interestingly, Arpaio himself acknowledged the right of activists to legally observe arrests in a 2006 letter sent to Sean Whitcomb, an activist with Copwatch, an organization in Phoenix dedicated to monitoring all police agencies in the Valley. In a response to a letter from Whitcomb sent to advise the MCSO of what Copwatch would be doing, Arpaio even went so far as to solicit their help with any malfeasance they might observe.

"Thank you for taking the time to give us a brief synopsis about your organization's concern for police brutality," states the letter, signed by Arpaio.

The correspondence goes on to say, "If you feel that you have observed any misconduct by any of our employees, please call the Sheriff's Administration..."

(You can read Arpaio's letter, here, and Whitcomb's letter prompting that response, here.)

Though Copwatch was out observing this latest sweep, not all of those videotaping are Copwatch members. Asked why he thought there were so many conflicts with legal observers this last time out, Whitcomb chalked it up to confusion on the deputies' parts as to how to deal with them.

"I think it's because deputies are not being trained on how to handle encounters with observers," said Whitcomb. "There are some who are familiar with Copwatchers being there, and there are some who are not, and who are uncomfortable with it. I think it comes down to them being uncomfortable with the public knowing exactly what they are doing.

"An officer who is doing everything according to the letter of the law, has nothing to fear from being videotaped," continued Whitcomb. "But those who feel like what they're doing is not appropriate or who feel like the entire operation leaves a bad taste in their mouths, then they might not feel comfortable with being personally a part of it."

Whitcomb said Copwatch has been around since 1999, and has dozens of active members. None of its members have ever been arrested or had their cameras confiscated by local gendarmes, he informed. (Carlos Galindo, mentioned above, is not a Copwatch member.) Each Copwatch member goes through about two to three hours of training devised with the help of lawyers.

Copwatch usually films public police activity from about 20 feet away, according to Whitcomb. When an officer or deputy tells them they cannot film, they inform the law enforcement officer of their legal right to do so, and the officer usually relents.Whitcomb also pointed out that when Copwatch is present, the law enforcement officers in question are more likely to do things by the book, smile more, and be polite to the citizens they've halted.

Recently Arpaio has made statements to the media regarding a mysterious new tool he may have to counter those supposedly "interfering" with his deputies' investigations. He's also spoken of activists with video cameras disparagingly. But in 2006, at least, he was singing a different tune. 

Hope for Arizona's Future

I first prepared this post a couple of days ago in haste. Since then I've had time to think more about the anarchists I've met in recent months - those pictured here and those who remain anonymous. What I've witnessed firsthand is that this predominately young group of people get together every week to discuss how to make their community a better place to live for the poor and dispossessed; how to build sustainable communities; how to challenge things like racism, xenophobia, and police harassment of minorities; how to feed the hungry - not as charity, but through shared vegetarian meals that makes hunger visible and the poor less stigmatized; and how to take a more active role in shaping this town without participating in the processes which corrupt it, like politics.

And every week, without fail, they pass a hat to raise a little cash to support a few political prisoners. It may not come to much, but half of nothing is a whole lot more to prisoners of conscience than a little of everything. If I was a prisoner locked away in a hole, these are the folks I'd want to know I existed, because they'd never forget me...ever.

So, as I said in an earlier post, when Marcia Powell died, I knew these were the folks to seek out who would go all the way, if necessary, to make her life visible and meaningful. In fact, it was Stan, the guy up there with the unabashed full-faced smile in the front, who remembered her from the anarchists' "Food Not Bombs" Sunday meals and delivered the only account of her anyone had at the memorial service that wasn't extracted from her criminal record. Rather, it came from his heart, and from her smile.

These are some of Phoenix's anarchists. They reject domination and hierarchy, even when it would be so much more convenient, like when they run their meetings - it's all done by consensus, which can take forever sometimes. Despite appearances and stereotypes, they aren't really all young, white and male - though I've been known to joke that I'm not enough of any of the above to be an anarchist myself. They're far more diverse a bunch than they appear, and have a fairly sophisticated understanding of what's going on in the world.

Unlike a lot of groups of young people, these folks study and work diligently to figure out their role in making this a better place, and most are involved in the community in a number of positive ways - supporting No More Deaths, the Rusty Spoke Bike Collective, Food not Bombs, Copwatch, the Latino community's battle against racial profiling, the rights of prisoners in our county jail, and the dignity and survival of the poor. When the occasion seems to call for direct action, they also put themselves on the line to protest war, capitalist exploitation, hatemongers, the carceral regime, and yes, those damn neo-Nazis (also known as "Friends of Sheriff Joe").

I'd say that as members of the Valley community, our anarchists represent the best of us pretty well. I've never seen a single one do or suggest a criminal act - no one has even fired up a joint or cracked a beer in front of me. I wouldn't be ashamed for a moment to be seen, photographed, or even arrested with them - even though I frankly still don't really know what an anarchist is. The closest frame of reference I have, in fact, is the Society of Friends. These kids hardly even swear - I'm more vulgar (and probably more of a criminal) than most of them. And when it comes to their collective politics, their community service, and their processes of decision-making, that's who they remind me of - a bunch of Quakers. Abolitionists who would live and die for what they believe in - a few John Browns in the mix, maybe (thank god, really) but mostly a bunch of committed pacifists who would hang for teaching someone to read, distributing anti-racist literature, or protesting the Fugitive Slave Act.

Now, put that in their FBI files, and shove it. And remember this if any of them get put away for manifesting the better half of humanity's conscience - find out their name, declare your public support, and pass a hat. Forget the "rights" of the racist pigs to spew holocaust lies and hate: window-smashing stereotypes aside, if these kids can't be free to express themselves in this country, then the rest of us are in a whole lot more trouble than we ever thought.

These Anarchists Rock!

(Photo stolen without permission from the Feathered Bastard's blog at the Phoenix New Times 07/14/09. Sue me.)